


Years Without You

by queercapwriting (queergirlwriting)



Series: Where's Your Head At? [30]
Category: Captain Marvel (2019)
Genre: F/F, but also like, danbeau, domestic danbeau, endgame spoilers, i hurt, i just, like right away, once again, pains me, spoilers of the endgame, wholesome and painful and hurt/comfort and like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-04 21:10:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18820792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queergirlwriting/pseuds/queercapwriting
Summary: Some of this story serves as a reunion piece, but I wanted to write it more fully because I enjoy causing myself pain, apparently.Caution: the SpoilerGame starts right away.





	Years Without You

“There’s somewhere I need to go first,” she’d told Natasha - the one who seemed like she was in charge - after she dropped off Tony and Nebula.

Natasha read the situation right away: the gravity in her eyes that spoke of mass death far, far from home and a terror of what had happened within that mass death. One or two people, she guessed. Mass death that could be dealt with, maybe, somehow, if those one or two people were alive.

“We… have a database. Of all the… missing,” she murmured, almost apologetically. She hated the euphemism, herself. The missing. She had a feeling this Carol woman would hate it, too.

But there was only exhausted fire in her eyes as she shook her head. “I need to see for myself. I shouldn’t be long.”

Because she knew. She knew that they weren’t there.

Her daughter and her… wife, was the closest way she could… Maria. Her daughter and Maria.

She knew they weren’t there. 

That they’d disappeared.

Fury wasn’t the only one she’d left a communicator with, and she’d be damned if they were still alive and hadn’t used it.

From what Tony described of that Peter boy, and from what she’d witnessed on other planets, sometimes it had happened slowly, for people. 

Fury had had enough time to see what was happening to his world, and activate his pager.

She hoped that a lack of last communication from Monica and Maria meant that it had been quick, for them.

That neither had seen the other evaporating into atoms, that neither had had the time to wonder what happened after death.

She didn’t dare hope that they were alive.

So Natasha had just touched her arm, and nodded. “Go. We’re… not going anywhere.”

She turned one last time before taking off, to make sure the people she’d rescued were situated. To see Nebula holding the hand of a furry cabbage patch doll, to see Tony shaking in Captain America’s arms.

“So, Captain America’s a thing again,” she confirmed, because Monica had told her in messages about Steve’s return from the ice, but seeing the icon in person was… well, under different circumstances, it would have been cool.

“Sure is. Won’t leave me alone, really.”

Carol nodded and hovered, about to zoom into flight.

“Carol,” Natasha stopped her. “I hope you find them.”

They grimaced a pained salute as Carol headed to Louisiana.

She found exactly what she’d expected, and nothing she’d wanted.

She wanted to set fire to the world.

She turned her sights on fixing it instead.

It took longer than anyone had wanted, and during those years, she averted more civil wars, more broken planets resorting to genocide, than she cared to count. Because other planets were ripping themselves apart.

At least Earth had support groups run by Steve Rogers and security run by Natasha Romanoff.

Even if it had no Maria and Monica Rambeau.

But then they went through time and then Bruce snapped everyone back and then the final battle began, and she knew she should be flattered that Thanos’s entire army turned its fire from thousands of formidable Earth warriors toward her the moment the flew into range, but instead, she was just focused.

Focused on ending this, because the sooner she ended this, the sooner she could get home.

She realized quickly enough what Tony had meant about that Peter Parker kid. 

And she realized quickly enough that getting hit with the full force of an Infinity Stone was something she could not only survive, but punch back from.

Hard.

And she realized, slow and steady and painful, that Natasha wasn’t on the battlefield, but Red Skull had nothing on her and she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to get that woman out of the depths of hell.

But in a moment.

In a moment.

Because right now, for the first time in years, she needed to do something for herself.

Battle over, grieving commencing, Carol flew to Louisiana faster than she could ever remember flying.

Or maybe that was just the adrenaline.

She stopped by Maria’s house first, because maybe Monica had been visiting, when the Snap happened. Maybe she could find both of them at once.

But it was only Maria, dazed and terrified but steady, as always, set to work organizing her neighbors’ nerves and terrors as they found themselves back, as they tried to get themselves back in touch with their families after five years of dead phones and deader hopes.

All the while, Maria’s hands were fixing her plane.

So Monica hadn’t been with her. She’d probably been on base, with NASA.

But Carol’s heart skipped, because she was here now. Monica wouldn’t need her plane to get to her daughter.

“Maria,” she called, landing right where she had stood all those decades before, back from the seeming dead from Hala.

But this time, it was Maria, back from the dead.

Sort of.

But this time, they didn’t have any explaining to do.

Just a lot of time to make up for.

Maria sprinted into Carol’s arms, and her neighbors had the decency to stroll away, give them privacy, because Maria’s arms were around Carol’s neck and Carol’s arms were scooping Maria’s body off the ground from her waist, the small of her back, and neither were sure if they were kissing or crying, laughing or sobbing, hugging or clinging.

Both, and all.

“Monica,” was all Maria said after a moment, and Carol nodded while Maria wiped her face, kissed Carol’s knuckles over and over and over, and went to give her neighbor Tom instructions on keeping everyone calm and safe while she was gone.

She assured him she’d be right back, and no, she didn’t need to finish tuning up her plane: Carol was her ride.

She flew in Carol’s arms to Monica’s home near NASA, and there were more tears, and there was more hugging, and more sobbing, Carol and Maria’s arms both wrapped around their grown daughter, hysterical and happy all at once.

Grown as she was, it took Monica hours to leave her parents’ bed that night to sleep on her own. And even still, tonight, on her own meant surrounded by her childhood stuffed animals, tucked in by both her mothers, texting her again-alive friends and assuring those who’d survived the five years that she would be back, she would help them heal, just as soon as she’d done some healing herself.

In their room, Maria lay in Carol’s arms, head on Carol’s chest, hand curled across Carol’s body to play with her newly short hair. 

Carol kissed Maria’s forehead, her ear, her vaguely disregarded scarf, over and over and over, relishing the silence aside from Maria’s steady breathing, until Maria spoke.

“What did you do?”

She didn’t have to clarify.

During the years between the two snaps.

“It wasn’t just Earth. It was everywhere. So I was everywhere.”

She didn’t have to tell Maria the death she’d seen, the devastation and the hopelessness.

It was all in her voice.

“When did you rest?” Maria raised her head to look at her war-worn wife.

“I didn’t.”

It was the only honest answer Carol could come up with.

“You can rest now, baby. If only for a little while.”

Maria was shifting, now, to climb on top of Carol, kissing her skin soft and reverent.

Carol shook her head and smirked, easily rolling both herself and Maria over so her arm was looped around Maria’s low back, holding her entire body easily, kissing her down into their pillows.

“I have to go to a funeral. And get an old friend back from… from something she didn’t deserve. And it’s not going to be easy: all these people suddenly being back. There’ll be wars, and bitterness, and more wars. The people who lived through it and the people who were living in a completely different reality not five minutes ago, from their perspective.”

“We’re doing alright, though. You and me. And you lived through it and five years ago was five minutes ago for me.”

“I know. But we’ll always be alright, you and me.” Carol kissed her slow and deep.

“Can you rest tonight, baby? You deserve to rest.”

Carol nodded, and nearly preened as Maria’s hands found their way into her short hair again.

And when they kissed this time, it was with the abandon of everything they’d lost, and everything they’d missed.

And just as Maria moaned and tilted her head back to give Carol better access to her throat, the door opened and a distinctly not sexual groan filled the room.

“God you guys, just because I’m grown doesn’t mean I need to walk in on my parents doing all this.” Monica’s hands were over her eyes, but there were tears in her voice. 

“I’m sorry. I know you missed each other, seriously. But I just - I can’t sleep, and I -”

“Come here, Lieutenant Trouble,” Carol shifted off Maria with a chaste kiss to her mouth, and held her arm out for their daughter.

“You’re never to old to get mama cuddles,” Maria kissed her daughter’s cheek as she crawled into the space between her mothers’ bodies.

“You sure I’m not bothering you?”

“Never,” they both answered at once.

Never. Like they’d never be apart from each other again.


End file.
